Why has America become so bad at building housing, infrastructure, and major projects?
Brian Potter, author of The Origins of Efficiency and writer of Construction Physics, explains why prefab housing keeps failing and why there are no easy fixes to America’s building problem. We discuss Katerra, California’s anti-growth turn, and the deeper logic behind local opposition to growth: concentrated harms and diffuse benefits.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro
05:57 Housing as the Model T
08:04 Why atoms scale differently
14:55 Hamiltonian vs. Jeffersonian America
18:25 Can America still mobilize?
24:13 AI as automation
27:42 Why robots lag
34:06 Sweden’s prefab paradox
36:05 California turns anti-growth
55:09 Concentrated harms, diffuse benefits
59:24 Why moonshots still matter
01:09:34 Build housing, make AI safe
